Comprehensive & Futuristic National Health Policy

Last Updated on April 27, 2017 by Bharat Saini

National Health Policy 2017, recently cleared by the centre is, “comprehensive & futuristic, placing the interests of the citizens first & foremost and marks a historic moment in our Endeavour to create a healthy India where everyone has access to quality healthcare”, in the words of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Salient Features of the National Health Policy 2017 are as under:

• It proposes free drugs, free diagnostics and free emergency and essential health care services in all public hospitals in a bid to provide access and financial protection.
• It aims to provide quality healthcare to all in an assured manner and strive to address current and emerging challenges arising from the ever-changing socio-economic, technological and epidemiological scenarios.
• It envisages a three-dimensional integration of AYUSH systems encompassing cross referrals, co-location and integrative practices across systems of medicines.
• It aims to raise public healthcare expenditure to 2.5% of GDP from current 1.4%, with more than two-thirds of those resources going towards primary healthcare. From 1995 to 2014 India’s public expenditure on healthcare merely rose from 1.1% to 1.4% of GDP, compared to a global average of 4.9%.
• It intends to ensure availability of two beds per 1,000 populations distributed in a manner to enable access within golden hour – the first hour after traumatic injury, when the victim is most likely to benefit from emergency treatment.
• It aims to reduce infant mortality rate to 28 by 2019 and reduce neo-natal mortality to 16 and still birth rate to single digit by 2025.
• It entails introducing yoga much more widely in schools and work places and proposes to increase life expectancy from 67.5 to 70 years by 2025.
• It aims to reduce total fertility rate (TFR) to 2.1 at sub-national and national level by 2025.
• It seeks to establish regular tracking of disability adjusted life years (DALY) Index as a measure of burden of disease and its major categories trends by 2022.
• It envisages making of family health card and connect it to Public Health care facility so that a patient’s history can be digitally
• It envisages providing a larger package of assured comprehensive primary healthcare through the ‘Health and Wellness Centers’.
• It aims to ensure delivery of healthcare services to socially vulnerable population groups and promote research on tribal medicines.
• It denotes important change from very selective to comprehensive primary health care package which includes care for major non-communicable diseases, mental health, geriatric health care, palliative care and rehabilitative care services.
• It advocates development of mid-level service providers, public health cadre, nurse practitioners to improve availability of appropriate health human resource.
• It envisages establishment of a Public Health Management Cadre in each State.
• It envisages the creation of National Health Care Standards Organization to formulate guidelines and protocols for healthcare and looks at reforms in the existing regulatory systems, thereby easing drugs and devices manufacturing to promote ‘Make in India” and reform medical education as well.
• It boasts of having an effective grievance redressal mechanism by establishing a separate empowered tribunal for speedy resolution of disputes and complaints.

The new policy replaces the 2002 Health Policy, which was preceded by the first National Health Policy of independent India in 1983. Although the policies of 2002 or 1983 policy have not been very effective in achieving all the stated objectives, yet India’s public healthcare policy has performed remarkably well in certain specific areas, such as in bringing down maternal and infant mortality, and ensuring that an overwhelming proportion of births are from institutional deliveries.

We may hope that new policy achieves better results as, according to Health Minister J. P. Nadda, “The National Health Policy 2017 seeks to move away from sick-care to wellness, with a thrust on prevention and health promotion. While the policy seeks to reorient and strengthen public health systems, it also looks afresh at strategic purchasing from the private sector and leveraging their strengths to achieve national health goals. Everyone in the country will be given assured health services. Every section of the society belonging to any financial status, whosoever comes to our public health facility, will get assured services. This policy is patient centric and the patient has been empowered”.